Road carnage is the 10th leading cause of death globally. An estimated 1.2 million people die as a result of road accidents while another 50 million are injured. This is a big burden on the health sector. If this trend continues, it is predicted that road traffic injuries will be the third global contributor to disease and injury by 2025. More than half of the road traffic deaths occur among people aged 15-44 years. Additionally, the disability burden brought about by road accidents makes about 60% of this group. This translates to a significant loss of gross domestic product since this is the productive age of society. For younger drivers, inexperience, lack of skill, and risk-taking behavior have been associated with road collisions, while mobility, visual, and cognitive impairments affect older drivers.
Twitter is a new phenomenon that only came into existence in 2006. The founder, Jack Dorsey, initially imagined Twitter as an SMS-based communication platform, which he proposed to his co-founder Evan Williams (Bilton,2014). In its early days, Twitter was referred to as twttr because it was trendy to drop vowels in a domain –name. This name was birthed by a software developer by the name Noah Glass and later modified it to the current, Twitter. The first Twitter message was sent by Jack on 21st March 2006 which read “just setting up my twttr.”
Twitter usage has since grown in leaps and bounds, and in 2007 South by Southwest interactive conference, more than 60,000 tweets were sent per day in this conference. As Twitter gained popularity, users started to create jargon among themselves as a way of communication. For example, the @ symbol was used as a way of one user replying to another, and there was also the introduction of the hashtags. There was also the ser-driven functionality on the source of retweets. For a user to credit the original twitter user, they would add RT (for report) before sending the message. With time these symbols were added to the Twitter platform by the company.
Twitter has had growth challenges during its formative years. One of the major challenges was the overloading of servers as a result of high numbers and frequent use of its platform
Twitter is, therefore, an online microblogging service that is used for distributing short messages known as tweets among recipients, also as followers. An individual can use his personal computer or his mobile phone to type and send a message which goes to a twitter server, which relays the message to the list of followers ( people who have signed up to receive the sender’s tweets) (Limbu, 2013). Additionally, Twitter users can elect to track specific topics, creating a dialogue of sorts, and this can push the number of followers of a given Twitter feed into millions. The subject of the tweets varies from one user/ Twitter feed to another.
Twitter has become the first option for breaking news. We run to get facts relating to war, plane crashes, and even celebrity gossip. Official government responses have also been using this medium compared to the traditional press release. Moreover, the use of hashtags has transformed our way of accessing and managing information. We use twitter hashtags to run campaigns and to rally for some individuals or products (Murthy, 2013). The real-time messaging ability help users to get real-time information regarding the weather, traffic conditions, and train delays. Businesses and governments can use this great platform to respond to a crisis in a timely and appropriate manner. Twitter use has also influenced how professionals connect and interact since it allows people to keep up to date with issues, follow events remotely, and interact with other professionals to create global networks.
The medium is the message. This means that the actual content means far less than the medium through which it is being delivered. Twitter, as a medium, has changed how people communicate and, in doing so, has altered the original message. One of the main forces in Twitter is the short length of the message (140 characters or fewer). This means that it forces a brief tone in messages and eradicates long explanations. This can significantly affect how the audience receives the message, especially if they are not able to read the messages from the beginning and follow through the “threaded tweet”s or “tweetstorms.”
Furthermore, Twitter allows and individual to publish information as it happens without the need for an editor’s review. Such information may be interpreted in various conflicting ways by the audience. This may leave the audience wondering whether the message is still valid, Whether the sender has since changed their mind, and whether the message is still factual, especially if the sender has not deleted it. Another challenge is that it is impossible to edit a tweet once it has been sent out. The sender may not be able to correct typos and other grammatical mistakes (Murthy, 2013)
A more recent development is the addition of multimedia functionality, which allows or the distribution of messages without the author. This has lead to photographs, videos, and screenshots being edited with no acknowledgment, allowing the creator of the original tweet to distance themselves from the original content.
The Uses and gratification framework is a media use paradigm from mass communications research that guides the assessment of user motivations of media usage and access. This paradigm explains the reasons why people would choose a specific medium over the other media and explains why people would psychologically prefer a particular medium. This paradigm assumes that the users are goal-oriented in their chosen behavior and are aware of their existing needs. Whenever a new form of technology enters the stage of communication, the uses and gratifications will be applied to explain why people would prefer a particular medium over the others. Twitter helps its users to get information in real-time, and this helps them make decisions on matters affecting them like traffic jams, plane delays, change of weather patterns, and other issues. Twitter is also a great medium to help people get trending information. It also helps to get breaking news keeping its users abreast of the current affairs.
Hall’s Discursive theory stages the four stages of communication, namely production, circulation, consumption, and reproduction. At production, the encoding of the message takes place, allowing the creator of the message to feed his audience with society’s beliefs and values. Circulation, on the other hand, involves the transmission of the message. Transmission of messages influences how the audience will receive the message and how they put it to use. The third step involves decoding or interpretation f the message. This is a complex and delicate process by the audience. Reproduction involves the reaction after the audience has consumed the message. Twitter use to provide them for stages except that most times, the audience doesn’t have an opportunity to get back to the sender if the sender does not follow the receiver.
Its users have used twitter as a way of creating a sense of belonging to a given community. The use of hashtags has become markers signifying support for a cause or individual, defined political movements, and sometimes used to trigger specific actions in the community. By using hyperlinked hashtags, individuals can tag personal opinions and thoughts concerning an issue or event. In addition, the searchable hashtag functionality allows users to discover a collection of similar ideas. Interestingly, users are allowed to assign meaningful hashtags to their content rather than being assigned by the media platform. This creates a social ‘folksonomy’ that evolves, allowing people to add explicit meaning to their content. It would seem, therefore, that individuals can create some sense of identity with others online without necessarily meeting them.
Twitter and Twitter use has dramatically changed the social-cultural aspects of our society. One of the areas that have greatly been affected is the business area. Twitter has opened communications between business owners and customers. One of the advantages that come with this is that businesses can get feedback from their clients and, at the same time, giving the business owners opportunities to look into the complaints and provide solutions. This would make businesses grow if handled well. Twitter has also opened new horizons for the scientists. First, the science world can get information from the public and also because Twitter is a rich source of data by itself. Data gathering on Twitter can be both passive or active, depending on what scientists are interested in gathering. Moreover, the development of twitter has transformed journalism and how information is passed. People are no longer fixated on the traditional mass media to get the hottest news in the town. The newsrooms no longer control the flow of information in the world, but it’s being tweeted. Today’s politics and general governance has also been affected by Twitter. Political messages and campaigns are often distributed through Twitter. Twitter is also being used to gauge public opinion; this is often a false sense of consensus because followers tend to connect with people who hold similar views to their own. Relationships are also changing and evolving thanks to the use of Twitter. Since Twitter messages are public, one can follow someone without them having to follow back. This has created opportunities for a form of cyberstalking where followers are able to eavesdrop on personal information beyond personal and professional networks. Additionally, users open themselves to some level of intimacy with their followers, which involves disclosure about highly personal aspects of daily lives, competences, and desires. Twitter also has changed celebrity culture because the followers of such celebrities are able to communicate directly to them without restrictions; additionally, they able to follow their idols’ everyday life happenings.
According to Lucidi et al. (2003), distracted driving is a growing threat on our roads. This is because drivers are likely to miss traffic signals, are likely to be slower to detect and respond to signals they find on the road and are more likely to be involved in collisions with other vehicles when they are engaged on their mobile phones. What is more, is that the driver’s gaze on the road does not always translate to “seeing” when they are busy with their phones and, therefore, may not make the right judgment. In such a situation, the driver’s attention is directed away from his external environment and pulled towards his internal environment, which constitutes his mobile phone and the information he is consuming (Barth, 2018). Additionally, the information the driver is consuming also contributes to road collisions because it may arouse the driver’s emotions like laughter, anger, disgust, and others. This affects the driver’s cognitive abilities and may result in him making or not making the expected choices (Akaateba, 2010).
From the foregoing, it is demonstartes that the use of Twitter has brought many benefits to modern society. It has become a mode of keeping in touch with peers, family, and celebrities. Twitter has played a big part in science and investigations as we as helped businesses grow. There have, however, been some downfalls relating to the use of social media while driving, and Twitter in particular. This influences the driver’s cognitive and reasoning abilities and might result in a road collision. It also affects the driver’s concentration, taking his eyes off the road to the information being passed through Twitter. Drivers should, therefore, shun this behavior but instead enjoy social media at the right places, away from the roads.
References
Akaateba, M. A. (2010). International Comparisons of Road Accidents.
Barth, G. (2018). Road Carnage. All Due Respect, an imprint of Down & Out Books.
Bartley, G. P. (2008). Traffic Accidents: Causes and Outcomes. Nova Publishers.
Bilton, N. (2014). Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal. Penguin.
Juhlin, O. (2010). Social Media on the Road: The Future of Car Based Computing. Springer Science & Business Media.
Limbu, M. (2013). Emerging Pedagogies in the Networked Knowledge Society: Practices Integrating Social Media and Globalization: Practices Integrating Social Media and Globalization. IGI Global.
Lucidi, F., Bosco, A., Mallia, L., & Setti, A. (2020). Factors Underpinning and Influencing Drivers’ Aberrant Behaviours Across the Life Course. Frontiers Media SA.
Murthy, D. (2013). Twitter: Social Communication in the Twitter Age. John Wiley & Sons.